


Hold Sway

by orphan_account



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-06
Updated: 2010-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:09:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the time Bush is at Sheerness, just before he is recalled to active service with Hornblower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Sway

Hastings brings in the newspapers. Young lad, eager to be away from here, just like all the boys Bush sees these days, hungry for advancement and adventure. Hastings is quiet, has an easy smile the likes of which Bush has seen the length and breadth of the channel - the Royal Navy is no place for softness but there are some who find pleasure in it, just as there are some who are excited by the prospect of war. 

Bush might once have felt the same way. He does know war meant employment, and he has not forgotten the cold, cramped nights which attended half-pay. Neither has he forgotten the sight and smell of boys like Hastings, hit by splintering wood, red rivers on the deck. The scraping of the holystone remains clear and sharp. 

Bush likes a clean ship yet there's half a thought in his head about the things officers leave behind. He knows that an old ship has the smoothest boards.

Hastings bows carefully, and across the desk Bush finds Cotard watching the boy leave. 

"To be so young again," Cotard says, his expression relaxing into a smile, one that does not mean happiness. "I find I dislike the thought. There are some things you can do only once."

*

Cotard wears a uniform, brilliant red beneath his blue cloak. He's a tall man, solid with years and his dark hair graying. His speech is still thickly French and unsettling, even after all this time. 

After their journey to Brest, Cotard had been transferred to the _Marlborough_. Bush remembered hearing the surgeon would have to remove the arm; he was in the captain's cabin; Hornblower told him. He can't recall what he had thought of the news. It must have made some impact - it was always hard luck when that sort of thing happened - but it escapes him now what that feeling must have been. They had sailed for Portsmouth, he remembers.

It's possible Cotard would rather have been left as he was, but injured men are not able to choose. 

*

Cotard does this; Bush doesn't know why. Unexpectedly, Cotard will arrive at the Sheerness dockyard and make noise about the Admiralty and France and the poor quality of English carriages. He has travelled from London and crossed to Sheerness on the ferry. It occurs to Bush, listening, that his speech is almost pretty; refined like a gentleman, like royalty.

On prior visits Bush had wondered if Cotard was there to inspect his work, but Cotard does not seem interested in the proper procedures for maintaining a dockyard. On most visits they leave Bush's office, they go to the Red Lion and dine together. The inn is warm and sometimes lively. Cotard grimaces at the serving woman and groans at the blackened steak, once cut into smaller hunks because they'd spied Cotard's sleeve pinned to his shoulder. He holds Bush's gaze and looks wicked. He says, "Perhaps I should call you William?" and Bush stares back blandly.

Tonight Bush finds himself looking at Cotard's injury. He holds his tankard before his lips, pausing. 

"What do you say?" he asks, surprising himself. "When people ask?"

"No one asks," Cotard shrugs; it looks strange.

After they eat Cotard walks with Bush back to the yard. These days Bush's left leg thumps instead of steps and his gait rolls a little, like a sailor just come off the sea. Above them patchy clouds are being pushed along by a brisk wind, all of them together, giving the impression that the sky itself is moving. 

Bush pauses to watch as a slowly re-forming sloop is worked on, a damaged vessel brought in for repair, and finds Cotard watching him, too. 

"So would a scholar look upon a book, I think," Cotard says. Bush thinks Cotard likes the sound of his own voice, for they were neither of them scholars or clever men. Both of them are past all that. Their courses were set a long time ago and there is nothing to be done now but hold them.

* 

"I am told Hornblower resides now in Smallbridge."

"That's so."

"That is not far from here."

"Not far. If you've a good team," Bush agrees. 

*

It is awkward but they manage. Bush realises he can't do it as he normally would, and nor can Cotard brace himself over Bush. Normally, Bush had a woman sit astride him and left her to do much of the work, and it seems to occur to them both that it might work that way for two men also. 

They have no need to be delicate or careful. Bush sits on the bed, leaning back against the wall, and Cotard's long legs fold beside and over him. As Cotard moves, with a rocking of his hips, Bush grips at his side, his shoulder. His skin is warm and bare, smooth with the sweat that gleams on his throat and the broad plain of his chest. They are fucking; it sends heat through Bush's body; it feels good. Cotard's right arm stops partway, there is a space below the stump where Bush's own arm can curve around to pull Cotard further onto his cock, closer towards his body. 

Cotard's face is unguarded like this. His cheeks are flushed, his throat. He moans in rough little breaths and curls his fingers in behind Bush's neck. 

*

Resting back on the bed, his cock lying soft along his abdomen, Cotard asks Bush if he is going to find himself a wife, "now that you are confined to land."

"That's no concern of yours," Bush says, and he thinks he will get dressed. Instead he leans over and opens his mouth against Cotard's.

They don't kiss, usually, but this time Bush licks his tongue over Cotard's with a thirst and decides he likes the wet heat, the roughness; the feel of Cotard's lips between his own is satisfying to him. 

"I only let you do this because you are stubborn, Bush," Cotard says. He is panting again. "Noblemen do not lie with -"

"Damn your mouth," Bush curses, getting his hand behind Cotard's head and pulling.

Bush is awake again at a small hour of the morning, when everything is dark and still. Long habit pushes him to listen for certain sounds; he notices Cotard is awake; he isn't troubled. This, the feel of another body close by him in the night, is something he has been accustomed to.

Cotard never stays long. This morning he bites Bush on the ear and palms his own cock beneath the sheets, and so he leaves later than usual, holding his head high as if he is beyond reproach. 

Stepping into his office, frowning at the poorly joined floor boards, Bush wonders if Cotard has been to Smallbridge, or is on his way there now. He doesn't know why else a French soldier might travel this way. 

*

Time passes before Cotard arrives in Sheerness again. It is early June, the sun is beginning to grow heated. It reminds Bush of the heat of other places: the West Indies, the Mediterranean, where even the water was warm.

When Cotard is ushered into the room, Bush is writing some correspondence, which he finds to be wasteful. It achieves nothing except, on his part, an ache in the head. He presses fingers to his eyes when Cotard looks out the small window.

"I hope I find you well, Captain," Cotard says. 

"Well, thank you, Major," Bush replies.

They take port and talk a little about the use of salvaged timbers and the smuggling that blights Kent. The idleness itches at Bush unbearably. He straightens his papers, thinks about sliding his fingers between the folds of Cotard's carefully-tied neckcloth.

That night, Cotard asks again about Bush taking a wife. 

When Bush rebuffs the question, Cotard says, "You do not wish to speak of it, I see, but I wonder why that is so. Perhaps you have been ill-used in love?"

"You ask impertinent questions, Major."

"You answer impertinently."

"I don't answer at all," Bush replies.

"Just so!" Cotard seems pleased, as though he has scored a hit. He is an Army-man, still, and works to a strategy in his head. Bush almost asks why Cotard has no wife, but he has a rare insight that this would lead to a speech about nobles and the dreadful sight of English women, and so he bites his tongue.

"Every man finds himself a little ill-used in love," Cotard comments. "When we are young we think it is a fine thing."

Bush scrapes at the mustard on his plate. It's a pity they are seated in the inn and not the private quarters Bush keeps. It's much easier to stop Cotard's mouth when they are alone.

"And when we are old, we realise it has only taken pieces away from us."

The inn is quiet tonight. Bush chews doggedly, his heart beating strangely in his chest.

*

He wakes to words being murmured against his neck. Hornblower would understand them; Bush does not.

"Damnable Frogs," he mutters, tugging the sheet higher over his stomach. 

Cotard rises and dresses partway. Bush realises he must usually have a steward to help him, though whenever he comes to Bush he is alone. He sits in the chair Bush keeps near the bed, and takes out the pistol he carries with him. He touches it more carefully than he has touched Bush.

The early morning light is hazy. The bedclothes are cold enough to seem damp beyond the heated outline of his own body. Bush approves of the major's attention to detail as Cotard cleans the pistol with a steady hand; he begins to doze as he watches the slip, slip, slip of the frayed cloth.

He dreams, of sorts, of standing on the gun deck of the _Temeraire_, salt and sweat in the air, the old girl lively, her bow plunging over the water. He remembers the music of the rigging and the hearty strain of his throat.

He breathes deep and rouses himself to wakefulness. Cotard is still there.

*

In the winter of losing his foot, Bush had struggled to be glad he was alive. He was no help - a burden - to his captain. He sweated and ached when he tried to walk, and his left foot itched and throbbed when it wasn't there anymore. 

Worse, he had no notion he would be able to go to sea again. Hornblower would have to put him off and find some man more capable.

It had been a cold winter. The snow fell without a sound.

*

The bone had been shattered above the elbow and though Bush does not wish to think of it, he knows what would have happened after that, the shrill agony, the night sweats, the tugging of the ligatures. He wonders if Cotard ever felt his lost hand tingling, like a phantom or a dream.

Cotard does not speak of his injury. Instead he tells Bush of how he came to join the military as a young man. It was a tradition for the men in his family to enlist in the Army. It was a noble profession, he said, to be in the service of one's country and the king.

He tells Bush of the places he has served, of the way some men come to despise foreign camps after a time.

"It must be enough," he adds. "The service must be enough to sustain us when we cannot go home." He is steady, the familiar edge of mocking has faded. 

When Cotard lapses into silence Bush tells him, without names, a little of the winter he spent in France.

*

Cotard never stays long. They shake hands awkwardly, as though they have once been at war with one another, and the amusement Cotard so often displays drops away: he does not like leaving. 

"A good journey, Major," Bush says as their hands meet. 

There is never a clear indication their paths will continue to cross but there is a wish, a recognition: there are some things you can do only once, and Bush is not a man to court regret. 

And so they separate, anticipating the coming day, the work they have, the vague spectre of reunion before them. Bush turns away in the direction of his office, Cotard in the direction of the ferry. As he makes his way along the street Bush can see him still, a figure at the corner of his eye making a striking impression: the sun bright and warm on Cotard's shoulders, a blaze of red beneath a blue sky.

He has no thought, as he continues on his way, that they will never meet again.


End file.
